‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ score Cowabunga box office

HOLLYWOOD, August 10, 2014 – Cowabunga, dudes! Paramount’s just-released “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” action film looks to be on track for an estimated $28.7 million opening box office weekend. That’s not going to knock off the legendary takes of earlier summer blockbusters like Marvel-Disney’s second “Captain America” installment. But it’s impressive enough that Paramount has already announced a sequel, tentatively slated for early summer 2016.

Even Bart Simpson would approve.

Much of the current film’s production partners will return for the sequel, although it remains unclear whether the current film’s director, Jonathan Liebsman, will helm the new flick.

“Turtles’” worldwide returns, tallying a total of 17 international markets, is projected to be around $97.3 million—surprisingly huge, given the uncertain record of contemporary films hoping to tread on previous generations’ nostalgia cravings. (Think “Speed Racer.”)

But the Turtles seem to have hit the right nerve with both today’s youngsters and their echo-boomer, Gen X parental units, the roughly 25-35 demographic. Today’s latest moms and dads grew up watching the Mutant quartet—something of an update to the Four Musketeers—battle the bad guys on their long-ago popular Saturday morning animated series

“Launching a new take on the Turtles into the feature film world was a daunting task because as fans of them ourselves, we felt a great responsibility to ensure audiences were going to experience everything they loved about the Turtles, while also getting to see them brought to life in a way they had never been seen before,” noted the Paramount Film Group’s President Adam Goodman in a statement issued this morning, according to Deadline Hollywood. Looks like they’ve already succeeded.

Goodman forgot to mention, however, that the silver screen return of the ever-hot dyna-babe Megan Fox in this film might also have had a little something to do with the Turtles’ box office bonanza.

Biographical Note: Dateline Award-winning music and theater critic for The Connection Newspapers and the Reston-Fairfax Times, Terry was the music critic for the Washington Times print edition (1994-2010) and online Communities (2010-2014). Since 2014, he has been the Business and Entertainment Editor for Communities Digital News (CDN).
A former stockbroker and a writer and editor with many interests, he served as editor under contract from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and continues to write on science and business topics. He is a graduate of Georgetown University (BA, MA) and the University of South Carolina where he was awarded a Ph.D. in English and American Literature and co-founded one of the earliest Writing Labs in the country. Twitter: @terryp17